Concerns with alpha version

[FestusHood]

A humble point of view about your concerns:
3) If you are refering to rangers,i have tanked dracolich in hard and done elite madstone with no divines with my tempest,by self healing with not empowered coccoon.
Now i can easily take empower heal and with a moderate plus from heal skill,positive spell power will be better.
I don't consider that a nerf.

I myself am wondering what on earth will rangers be spending all their feats on? They will be taking crazy things like skill focus umd.

[Charononus]

Well, people have been complaining for a while about how worthless rangers were, and how nobody in their right mind would ever take more than 12 levels of the class, and probably only 6. Lol, they certainly fixed that, didn't they.

That's to be able to take manyshot and get the free feats. Honestly I still don't see any reason to go pure ranger, you can't get favored enemy enhancements unless you're heavy sniper, the devotion enhancements are removed making it harder for them to self heal. Unfortunately I was unable to see the tempest tree today as I had a horc with 18 ranger 2 fighter that I tried to view it with and I got a bug where it said invalid when I tried to see it / use it. I'm going to make a pure ranger tomorrow and look at it again to see the full tempest tree, but unless it's been loaded with way more dps than before I still don't see a reason to go pure ranger and potentially even less of one with the nerf to rangers healing power.

[Davelfus]

Are you saying that the enhancement UI that we have now is simple and easy to use? You might be used to it, but it's not. I sometimes spend minutes looking for an enhancement even though i know exactly which one i am looking for. Then i realize it's not there because i haven't taken some prereq and have to open up unavailable enhancements. That's a real nightmare if you have multiple classes and prestiges.

Don't think it would be hard to change the current list UI to a tree per class/racial format...


anyways, one of my main concerns is the removal of general class enhancements, everything must be in some prestige tree.

this creates some silly stuff like we have in ranger were only the deepwood tree got the favored enemy enhancements, and the 3 trees limit makes this even worse. Wonder where they will put stuff like spell penetration, or monk stances...

not to mention all the enhancements classes are losing like fighter's haste boost...


so far it is looking pretty bad and if motu teached me anything was that little will change on the live version :\

[Kielbasa]

The main concerns I have so far are: AP costs for many abilities are too high, Spent AP to access tier 4/5 is too high, Paying AP for innate abilities seems like an unneeded tax on our already limited AP pool.

I can understand not wanting players to access certain abilities too early in their character development or allowing certain multi-class splits to be able to cherry pick certain skills. In the cases where a certain passive or active needs to be limited add a character, class level, or feat requirement to said skill to prevent this.

People should be encouraged to experiment more. As it currently stands you are more likely to have people invest 40-50 AP into a single class tree with the alpha build.

The ability to reach higher tiers in more skill trees with fewer action points should give room for more creativity.

[FestusHood]

not to mention all the enhancements classes are losing like fighter's haste boost...


so far it is looking pretty bad and if motu teached me anything was that little will change on the live version :\

Yeah, people who were splashing fighter for haste boost will now be splashing ranger. They will be able to get the full line of haste boost too, not just the first enhancement.

People were also saying that two handed fighting was so superior that nobody should take two weapon fighting any more. Maybe this will change that some.

[EllisDee37]

Also i just read in another thread that one of the cleric pre's is missing. That would most likely be an offensive casting one. But even if it isn't, maybe when fvs comes out we will see that 2 levels of fvs will turn a cleric into an offensive casting hellion.

There isn't a warpriest prestige, but you can splash 2 levels of fighter and get way more out of that than you can now. And still have 9th level spells.

That third cleric prestige isn't happening. They're frantically trying to finish the prestiges they have now, which will likely involve a mountain of work. Plus another expansion coming. Only then could they even consider revisting the missing prestiges. I'd be shocked to see any new prestiges within 2 years.

I just finished transcribing the cleric trees, and I couldn't be more bummed out. They so completely missed the mark I'm having trouble believing it's not an April Fool's joke.

Clerics should have been the easiest and most obvious to work with 3 prestiges:

1) Healing and turning undead
2) DC and offensive casting
3) Melee

I mean, geez, there's essentially 3 kinds of clerics in the game: Those that don't want to do anything but heal, those that want to DC/offensive cast and also heal raids with ease, and those that want to melee and also heal raids with ease.

The one thing most every flavor of cleric build has in common is that they can all heal raids with ease. Meaning the ONE AREA that didn't need love was healing. DC/offensive casting and melee absolutely needed some love; particularly DC/offensive.

So what did they do? They threw together two half-finished healing prestiges -- make no mistake, the "protector" domain is designed to be a single-ally healbot, compared to the "healing domain" generalist healbot -- and fleshed out the second half of both of them with pointless SLAs and goofy gimmicks like "Wary." Come on. Potentially +10 AC, losing +1 per 3 seconds? That's a joke, right?

I'm just so deflated, so disheartened by what they did to clerics. Not only did they not buff the only two areas that needing buffing, but they added total garbage just to fill out 2 trees that by all rights should be compressed into 3/4s of one tree. Good god, such a waste.

I probably should have started with ranger or fighter, but man, I'm currently tring my cleric through my first-ever legend life and have been so excited about playing him. That's all gone now. But at least that first-ever legend build won't feel like a slog at all now that the spark's gone, right? It's not like it requires a lot more xp than I'm used to, right? *sob*

[FestusHood]

The main concerns I have so far are: AP costs for many abilities are too high, Spent AP to access tier 4/5 is too high, Paying AP for innate abilities seems like an unneeded tax on our already limited AP pool.

I can understand not wanting players to access certain abilities too early in their character development or allowing certain multi-class splits to be able to cherry pick certain skills. In the cases where a certain passive or active needs to be limited add a character, class level, or feat requirement to said skill to prevent this.

People should be encouraged to experiment more. As it currently stands you are more likely to have people invest 40-50 AP into a single class tree with the alpha build.

The ability to reach higher tiers in more skill trees with fewer action points should give room for more creativity.

The way i see it now, the minimum class levels you need for enhancements is just as stifling. A lot of that will go away.

[Charononus]

Yeah, people who were splashing fighter for haste boost will now be splashing ranger. They will be able to get the full line of haste boost too, not just the first enhancement.

People were also saying that two handed fighting was so superior that nobody should take two weapon fighting any more. Maybe this will change that some.

Doubt it, the reason why not to go twf is that:

1) it doesn't synergize well with +w effects, you get a bigger damage increase from a 2her with deadly, cleave, ext
2) twf requires 3 feats, thf requires 0, you can take the thf feats for more glancing damage but overall they are not needed

As to splashing fighter for haste boost no.

Fighter is splashed for feats, yes people tend to take haste from it as well but it isn't the main goal. You do get some feats from ranger and if you want bow str it's still a good option. A potentially better one if you are only concerned with haste would be to go rogue and get evasion as well. So once again there isn't any real gain from this even for rangers.

[Kielbasa]

So what did they do? They threw together two half-finished healing prestiges -- make no mistake, the "protector" domain is designed to be a single-ally healbot, compared to the "healing domain" generalist healbot -- and fleshed out the second half of both of them with pointless SLAs and goofy gimmicks like "Wary." Come on. Potentially +10 AC, losing +1 per 3 seconds? That's a joke, right?

I'm just so deflated, so disheartened by what they did to clerics. Not only did they not buff the only two areas that needing buffing, but they added total garbage just to fill out 2 trees that by all rights should be compressed into 3/4s of one tree. Good god, such a waste.

I probably should have started with ranger or fighter, but man, I'm currently tring my cleric through my first-ever legend life and have been so excited about playing him. That's all gone now. But at least that first-ever legend build won't feel like a slog at all now that the spark's gone, right? It's not like it requires a lot more xp than I'm used to, right? *sob*

Well they did say that this was an alpha preview. We can only hope there are pieces of a more finished product on some dev's workstation. From what I've seen so far ranger looks like the class with the most polish on their prestige enhancements. Every other class and most of the racial enhancements are in a sorry state right now.

What's really weird is how they broke apart some of the rather nice things from the current system. For example stalwart stance got broken up into its composite parts when it it perfectly fine the way its set up now. Also they butchered Human Versatility to not be so versatile any more. There are more than a few questionable decisions in this first preview. But then there are a few nice surprises such as revamped halfling enhancements, and deepwood stalker.

[FestusHood]

That third cleric prestige isn't happening. They're frantically trying to finish the prestiges they have now, which will likely involve a mountain of work. Plus another expansion coming. Only then could they even consider revisting the missing prestiges. I'd be shocked to see any new prestiges within 2 years.

I just finished transcribing the cleric trees, and I couldn't be more bummed out. They so completely missed the mark I'm having trouble believing it's not an April Fool's joke.

Clerics should have been the easiest and most obvious to work with 3 prestiges:

1) Healing and turning undead
2) DC and offensive casting
3) Melee

I mean, geez, there's essentially 3 kinds of clerics in the game: Those that don't want to do anything but heal, those that want to DC/offensive cast and also heal raids with ease, and those that want to melee and also heal raids with ease.

The one thing most every flavor of cleric build has in common is that they can all heal raids with ease. Meaning the ONE AREA that didn't need love was healing. DC/offensive casting and melee absolutely needed some love; particularly DC/offensive.

So what did they do? They threw together two half-finished healing prestiges -- make no mistake, the "protector" domain is designed to be a single-ally healbot, compared to the "healing domain" generalist healbot -- and fleshed out the second half of both of them with pointless SLAs and goofy gimmicks like "Wary." Come on. Potentially +10 AC, losing +1 per 3 seconds? That's a joke, right?

I'm just so deflated, so disheartened by what they did to clerics. Not only did they not buff the only two areas that needing buffing, but they added total garbage just to fill out 2 trees that by all rights should be compressed into 3/4s of one tree. Good god, such a waste.

I probably should have started with ranger or fighter, but man, I'm currently tring my cleric through my first-ever legend life and have been so excited about playing him. That's all gone now. But at least that first-ever legend build won't feel like a slog at all now that the spark's gone, right? It's not like it requires a lot more xp than I'm used to, right? *sob*

Don't get too down. This won't be live for a while yet. Things may still change. My ranger is my favorite character. Like yours, i made him as strong at self healing as possible. My beautiful self healing cockroach. I spent the hours to grind out my ideal dragontouched armor set, 10%,20%, devotion 84. I plan to tr him into a tempest. Planned to take maximize so his heals would really zip. Losing the devotion enhancements is pretty painful. The way it's set up now, you couldn't even get something similar by splashing cleric. Not reasonably.

Then i look at the bright side. I'll have more free feats. I can take both maximize and empower heal and basically be back where i would have been before. It will just cost a lot of sp. All those mnemonic pots i passed over to my wizard? Hey buddy, about those pots.

We haven't seen the arcane trees yet. Maybe a 2 wizard splash will give clerics access to things they don't even have now. Maybe it will give access to a full line of spell pen enhancements. We'll have to wait and see.

[SealedInSong]

Clerics should have been the easiest and most obvious to work with 3 prestiges:

1) Healing and turning undead
2) DC and offensive casting
3) Melee

I mean, geez, there's essentially 3 kinds of clerics in the game: Those that don't want to do anything but heal, those that want to DC/offensive cast and also heal raids with ease, and those that want to melee and also heal raids with ease.

The one thing most every flavor of cleric build has in common is that they can all heal raids with ease. Meaning the ONE AREA that didn't need love was healing. DC/offensive casting and melee absolutely needed some love; particularly DC/offensive.

So what did they do? They threw together two half-finished healing prestiges -- make no mistake, the "protector" domain is designed to be a single-ally healbot, compared to the "healing domain" generalist healbot -- and fleshed out the second half of both of them with pointless SLAs and goofy gimmicks like "Wary." Come on. Potentially +10 AC, losing +1 per 3 seconds? That's a joke, right?

I'm just so deflated, so disheartened by what they did to clerics. Not only did they not buff the only two areas that needing buffing, but they added total garbage just to fill out 2 trees that by all rights should be compressed into 3/4s of one tree. Good god, such a waste.

Well-stated. Clerics, bards, and paladins really are the red-headed step-child whipping-boy lepers to the dev team, that's for sure.

[BOgre]

The more I see the less I like. We were 'promised' a complete PrE pass, not a half baked one. The idea that only the lines we're seeing now will make it live and the remaining lines will come 'some day' (or some year, or never), is a HUGE broken promise. I'd much prefer the system did NOT go live half done, and be released complete next year, or 2015, or NEVER.

If and when this does hit live, I'm hoping the cost to reset trees will be zero for the first month or two. It's a lot to figure out and none of it good.

[Failedlegend]

Overall I'm quite disappointed with the way things are looking don't get me wrong there's ALOT of cool stuff especially the some of the abilities within the PrEs. Alot of flavoury abilities as well but 90% of it is backloaded, there's WAY too many abilities that have super long chains of pre-reqs (ie. Wand/Scroll Mastery requires the useless enhancement wand heightening) this on it's own puts a damper on multi-classing.

Than there's the 3 tree limit which most people will say "well Failedlegend 3 classes, 3 trees right?" and that sounds logical but unfortunately you would be wrong. My current main character is a Wizard12/Fighter6/Rogue2 who first off is ticked at the lack of haste boost in fighter but I digress currently I'm using enhancements from obviously Palemaster and Stalwart Defender that's two taken already, than the third would likely be Mechanic to boost my trapsmithing skills. Ok failedlegend you say thats 3 your good...no I'm not I do not have access to Purple Dragon Knight, Wild Mage, Assassin, Archmage, Thief Acrobat or Kensai at the very least based on feedback Kensai will likely obtain Haste Boost so that's one major enhancement I don't have access to that my build currently does and we have even looked at the other 5. In short the 3 tree system cuts me off from enhancements I currently have access to.

Lastly there's the racial PrEs that instead of making interesting racially oriented PrEs (Halfing Talentia Outrider, Dwarven Runesmith, Warforged Juggernaut/Reforged, Elven Bladesinger,etc.) they just copied class PrEs which for my Dwarven Wiz/Fighter/Rogue you'd think would be awesome...which at first glance seems to be but it actually invalidates my reasoning for taking fighter 6 in the first place once again giving less reason to multi-class.

Than after all that as if multi-classing wasn't made unattractive enough the 3 tree system is actually a HUGE boon to single-class builds in that they have access to all 3 class PrEs as well as w/e racial they have instead of 1+ Racial so multi-classes lose another benefit they had over single-classes

So in short whilst there's alot of cool things getting added and I am quite intrigued to see more the new system as predicted is putting a HUGE damper on multi-classing whilst giving a huge boost to Single-Class builds.

Sidenote: I actually like the Perform/Heal/Repair Change but why does my PM have to take Heal? Actually I'm fine with taking heal just make it a class skill for Wizards

Hey Leslie dunno if your still here but this is what your wait and see attitude has wrought...exactly what I told you would happen.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

<The system is not flexible enough>

You and I have been on different sides of a number of issues related to enhancements, with you wanting a lot of choices and flexibility, first and foremost, and me wanting simplicity and reliability above all else.

And here we are in the Alpha, with six different and interwoven forms of restrictions on enhancement choices (feat prerequisites, enhancement prerequisites, level prerequisites, class / race prerequisites, the tree structure itself, and the ratio of AP-points-to-AP-costs). I believe there are also "lockouts" that prevent you from taking some enhancements, when you choose others (ie: a 7th form of restriction on choice).

Thus, it looks like we both found plenty of reason for disappointment. The above-mentioned sources of complexity make bugs more likely and make it harder for the devs to understand the implications of their own choices; this doesn't bode well for balance and reliability. They also make planning enhancements more like reading the line-by-line instructions for form 1040, which is non-immersive and simply not fun. All of this complexity is also clearly focused on restricting choice in a variety of ways, which is likely to irritate all of those who like build diversity.

[Dilbon]

OR I'd like for the skill-based spellpower values to account for your TOTAL modifier in a skill, rather than being tied just to the ranks invested.

They do. My bard's sonic spell power is equal to modified perform skill. Positive spell power is equal to heal skill without any ranks taken.

[Failedlegend]

You and I have been on different sides of a number of issues related to enhancements, with you wanting a lot of choices and flexibility, first and foremost, and me wanting simplicity and reliability above all else.

And here we are in the Alpha, with six different and interwoven forms of restrictions on enhancement choices (feat prerequisites, enhancement prerequisites, level prerequisites, class / race prerequisites, the tree structure itself, and the ratio of AP-points-to-AP-costs). I believe there are also "lockouts" that prevent you from taking some enhancements, when you choose others (ie: a 7th form of restriction on choice).

Thus, it looks like we both found plenty of reason for disappointment. The above-mentioned sources of complexity make bugs more likely and make it harder for the devs to understand the implications of their own choices; this doesn't bode well for balance and reliability. They also make planning enhancements more like reading the line-by-line instructions for form 1040, which is non-immersive and simply not fun. All of this complexity is also clearly focused on restricting choice in a variety of ways, which is likely to irritate all of those who like build diversity.

IOW instead of picking a side of the debate or coming to some sort of comprimise Turbine just screwed all its players :P

[EnjoyTheJourney]

IOW instead of picking a side of the debate Turbine just screwed all its players :P

Pretty much this. And the irony is that they were undoubtedly genuinely hoping to get a very large percentage of their players excited with this revision to enhancements.

I don't understand why it didn't register with the devs that if they were going to introduce a new form of restriction on choice (ie: trees) that they would all but need to ease off in other ways, to avoid restricting build diversity and to bring a greater degree of simplicity to the system.

[DeafeningWhisper]

My Bardcher TR had every single ability point carefully picked to be able to do traps, have UMD, performance, get IPS, decent amounts of HPs and so on... I would need to drop con by 2 to fit more int to get the self-healing I had with enhancements through the Heal skill now, reflex saves in the 50s won't keep me alive with less then 500 hps.

My Nun with a Gun, cleric 18 / arty 2, would also need to drop con or wis to fit more int, 4 points in her case.

This is a change for the worse IMO, we have traded enhancement costs for ability costs, enhancements we could play with at will, abilities require hearts of wood. Then again that may be the point...


Basically any build that aims to do more then what their main class can is been punished, "Oh so you want to heal AND do something else? I don't think so!", "You want to do traps with your rogue/arty lvls? Hell no, you go do what *we* think you're supposed to".


Either give us more skill points or re-think this, you are killing costumization, the *only* thing DDO has on every other generic MMO out there.

[Failedlegend]

Pretty much this. And the irony is that they were undoubtedly genuinely hoping to get a very large percentage of their players excited with this revision to enhancements.

I don't understand why it didn't register with the devs that if they were going to introduce a new form of restriction on choice (ie: trees) that they would all but need to ease off in other ways, to avoid restricting build diversity and to bring a greater degree of simplicity to the system.

Indeed it's a simple that I and many others play DDO over other MMOs because of the flexibility inherent in the 3.5 system removing that no longer makes DDO Attractive to me.

Look devs DDO is a mess it's buggy as hell, the visual customization is laughable both at creation and otherwise, the move to generic realms did not bode well and now your removing the one thing that keeps alot a people here despite the flaws...the flexibility, I don't want to see DDO die I love this game but if you keep ignoring your players were going to leave Wildstar and Neverwinter look better and better every day.

IMO there's 5 major things that I love about DDO

1. It's DnD...it used to be the only one now NWO has come there's competition

2. Its active combat system...used to be fairly unique at least among the F2P games but its ecome quite popular and many games have taken this style

3. Eberron - I'm sorry to all the FR lovers but the factr that DDO had a unique setting as opposed to the standard FR was a huge plus to me...it didn't have to be Eberron it could have been Dark Sun but I liked that it was unique. Developement being moved to FR is a big mistake IMO and is one less reason for me to play

4. The Flexible Payment system - This is amazing it's makes it so there's no barrier pay in any way you want, even not at all...unfortunately whilst Turbine started it this has become highly popular (despite some grognards insisting that P2P is superior in every way...don't get me started on the argument over on the wild star forums trying to convince the devs to do P2P instead of the planned F2P or B2P w/ Expansions...sorry bout the unrelated rant) so while still a plus for DDO I've got plenty to choose from

5. The Multi-classing system and the relatively flexible enhancements system - the new enhancement system in it's current state WILL destory this

By my count #1 has competition (NWO), #2 is becoming far more popular (ie. NWO, Wildstar, Tera, etc.), #3 has been abandoned and its replacement can be found elsewhere (NWO or NWN1/2), #4 is still very much intact but getting more and more common (again despite grognards insisting P2P = better game), #5 is currently very threatened....so all my fav things are either being threatened or availible elsewhere without the mass of bugs....seriously this is the only game I've ever played that or catch phrase when a bug happens is "meh DDO is just like that, w/e report, good thing this is an awesome game"

[Matuse]

I can't believe that after over a year of development, we get this. This time could have been spent getting existing PrEs to their Tier3, and adding the missing PrEs for classes who are shortchanged. So now we have Tier2 Radiant Servant encompassing the entire tree. There is no Tier3 Radiant Servant.

This isn't the collectible turn-ins, where some relatively small changes can salvage the entire process. This cannot be saved.

This is a clusterbump from start to finish. Even with major changes, it will still be a horrendously flawed disaster that will only serve to limit player creativity, pigeonhole roles, geld multiclassing, and remove much of the satisfaction of the current system where almost everything you pick in your enhancements gave you some kind of improvement. It may not be earth shattering (Energy III -> Energy IV is hardly the stuff of legend for character improvement), but with the occasionally exception of PrE pre-reqs, you always knew that you were getting SOMETHING out of the deal.

With this new system, you are forced to take an endless parade of abilities that are absolutely junk and provide no benefit in order to get the stuff you want. Turbine is also apparently become obsessed with filling our hotbars with junky short-term limited use abilities. We don't want that either. I've already got 14 hotbars on live...I literally do not have the room or the ability to operate with 8 more click abilities.

Almost everything in the current enhancement lists are passive. You select them and they are done and you forget about them. Now to get vaguely similar performance, you have to overly specialize (because build flexibility is eradicated), spent FAR more AP (the overall theme I'm seeing is that people need 110-140 AP to duplicate what 80 AP does now), and then spend fights doing uber micromanagement of super short duration buffs/abilities.

No thank you. Take this entire system, soak it in gasoline, and burn it to the ground. I'll take what we currently have.